Who is still familiar with Artifact or games Dota 2 style cards? The game, whose prestige had soared at the beginning of its release, turned out to have a tragic journey in its development. This article will reflect on the fate of Artifacts that have become “dead game”.
In the early days of its release in November 2022, the game genre collectible card game (CCG) shows a bright future prospect. How come? By design gameplay smart and unique, and developed directly by Valve, the pioneer of the ecosystem esports; it seems impossible if the game is not popular.
However, unexpectedly, Artifact was not able to meet the expectations and expectations of the developers as well as the players. Within 2 months after he was launched to the public, he experienced a very drastic decrease in the number of players. To be exact, 95%!
As of today, Artifact has less than a thousand active players per day. However, Valve also doesn’t stay silent as the game is heading to the brink of destruction. This year, Valve has planned a surprise for Artifact 2.0.
Before looking at the new Artifact, let’s study the cause of this Artifact’s failure.
Artifact’s first year
Artifact has all sorts of features one could expect from a new game esports. Starting from stage closed beta especially professional players, teams esports professionals who are very enthusiastic about joining, to the experience of the well-established Dota 2 developer.
As a publisher, Valve runs one of the platforms games largest in the world; the digital distribution platform Steam has tens of millions of daily users, with a game collection of 30,000 titles.
Not only that, Steam also runs 2 titles esports quite successful, namely Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) and Dota 2, which consistently provide career paths for professional players.
Given Valve’s background, coupled with its announcement to host a $1 million prize tournament like The International in early 2022, few are surprised. The media response was also quite positive in welcoming the presence of this Artifact.
Seeing that everything was going well, Valve further increased its enthusiasm by launching 2 webcomic which connects Artifact stories to the Dota 2 universe. Valve is also connecting Dota 2 services to Artifact by providing free Dota Plus features for 1 month for Artifact players.
Not to forget, Valve also poured ten thousand dollars for tournament exhibitions in the days before its release.
After the euphoria was over, within the first day of its launch, Artifact was only able to get 60 thousand players at the peak of 1 day. Very different from Dota 2 which daily can reach 400 thousand players.
according to SteamChartsin the span of a month, the number of players continued to decline to less than 10 thousand players per day, and in February the number decreased to less than a thousand players.
Not long after, almost no new news came from Artifact. Ecosystem esports what Valve was aiming for was also starting to lose its zest. The tournament with a prize of 1 million dollars is no longer heard from.
Likewise with the news from the Artifact team roster, several teams have disbanded this division. In these dark times, Valve’s only source of news is the blog just.
Right on March 29, 2022, Valve shared its reflection on Artifact’s journey, and vaguely announced that it was redesigning the game.
The correct course of action would be to take a bigger step, to review the decisions that have been made so far regarding the design gameseconomic systems, social experiences, and more… Going forward, we will focus on solving bigger problems than releasing updates.
The message indicated that the number of players at that time was very small, and did not even guarantee that Artifact could survive to bring in new players through updates-his.
What’s with Artifacts?
There are 3 main factors that contributed to Artifact’s failure: business model, competitors, and poor reviews.
Artifact bisnis business model
The business model can already be seen in the early days of its launch on Steam. Different from genre titles collectible card game other (CCG) in esports which generally offers experience free to play, Valve actually makes it pay.
Priced at 20 dollars, the CEO of Valve, Gabe Newell in an interview once gave an explanation for this.
If the playtime is free, or the account is free, or the cards are free, then anything that has a mathematical connection to it will eventually devalue over time, and you’re just making people spend thousands of hours on something small and simple. minor of the asset value of a card or whatever.
Valve is not alone in publishing a title esports paid exclusive. Blizzard Entertainment which released Overwatch in 2022 also has a similar business model to Artifact. The difference is, Overwatch was successful and was able to reach 40 million players.
However, the thing we can learn of course is the market is not ready to accept paid games for the CCG genre.
If you examine the difference between Overwatch and Artifact, Overwatch is a genre game first person shooter (FPS) which has a lot of interesting content, and is complete with various characters that can be played directly.
Meanwhile, Artifact was only released with 228 cards. A complete collection still requires hundreds more cards which can only be purchased through in-game purchases.
Perhaps the main problem with Artifact lies in its dissonance with popular Steam titles, such as Dota 2 and CS:GO. Dota 2 is free to play since its inception, and CS:GO is now also free to play than originally paid.
Instead of following an inclusive pattern, Artifact is exclusive.
Artifact Competitor
Another factor that caused the Artifact to become dead game are 2 unexpected rival titles, namely: Magic: the Gathering Arena and Dota Auto Chess (now Auto Chess).
Magic: the Gathering Arena
In fact, Artifact is not inferior to Arena which was first announced in 2022. What was not anticipated was the amount of high praise that Arena had received.
The innovation that Arena brings is quite visionary by bringing physical card games to the digital world. Many initially thought that this would fail, but the opposite happened. Arena also became a pioneering game that initiated the conversion success games physical card to electronic.
In addition, Arena also won the award label as rising esports number one in the world. And lastly, Arena is also building an ecosystem esports his own by holding a tournament esports $1 million prize too.
Dota Auto Chess
Artifact’s rivals come not only from the card game genre, but also from the genre esports others, such as genre auto battler.
Dota Auto Chess (DAC) is a mini games which was born from Dota 2, and developed by Big Drodo Studio. Released on January 4, 2022, the game is developing very fast. The number of daily players also reaches millions.
The game has also succeeded in establishing partnerships with ImbaTV and Long Mobile, which have succeeded in bringing the game from PC to a more lively platform, namely mobile esports. Have the same ambition as the game esports in general, Auto Chess has also launched a league esports-his.
In this respect, DAC is a very tough match for Artifact. First, DAC is available for free, can be accessed via Steamand has the same feel as Dota 2 and Artifact. DAC also features a lot of Dota characters, and is not a card game.
What’s more, DAC has similarities with Artifact through its strategic elements. From these elements, DAC managed to attract the attention of prospective Artifact players.
Artifact . negative reviews
The final factor that made the Artifact a dead game turns out to be from the community games which gives lots of negative feedback. Noted, Artifact already has more than 20,000 review on Steam the majority are negative.
From the start, Artifact had an ambition to build a game that would allow players to exchange cards (or buy and sell cards), using Steam. marketplace.
This idea is like a local physical shop selling physical cards. What makes it different from the physical shop is Artifact does not allow the exchange of the card to be done simply.
If at this time the players exchanged physical cards, they could do it very casually. It’s as easy as throwing away the unwanted cards and buying the ones you want. Actually this can also be done in Artifact.
The thing that players don’t like is that when Artifact has inserted the value of money into the value of a card, then when the card exchange occurs, the players must position themselves as traders and take into account the profits.
Cards are seen as a commodity and any changes to deck cards to match your strategy, comes at a price.
The worst point of trading this card is there is an additional fee from Valve for every transaction that occurs. Valve takes advantage of every sale.
With no way to exchange cards at physical stores, and there is no way to get free cards like other CCG games in generalArtifact players must be faced with a dilemma.
They also have to choose to enjoy gameplay fantastic for an additional fee, or switch hearts to another game.
Unfortunately, for this, the players prefer to leave Artifact.
Closing
Currently, Valve is preparing Artifact 2.0 which will reportedly be released this year. Previously, Valve was aware of making improvements to its long-term business model.
The current version of Artifact is definitely a valuable lesson for all developers esports. A sustainable business model, competitors that can come from any direction, and gaming experience more important than gameplayis a lesson to be learned from here.
Even Valve, which holds the status of a giant developer level, cannot escape this potential failure.
In addition, professional teams esports those who put their hope in Artifact also need to rethink that decision-making method. Gameplay The luxury of a game alone cannot be used as a reference.
They should also know how games was welcomed by the players. In the end, a games Of course you need players, and competitive games need more players.
(This article was first published in English. The contents have been modified by the author in accordance with Esportsnesia editorial standards; Edited by Satya Kevino; Source: The Esports Observer)
